


Where the Light Doesn't Reach

by Acxa_Kogane



Series: Shadowverse [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: All-Blades (DCU), Creepy, Fear, Good Parent Talia al Ghul, Gotham is alive and evil, Jason Todd is Not Okay, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is a Shadow Monster, Lazarus Pit, Mystery, Shadow/Fear Monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29325669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acxa_Kogane/pseuds/Acxa_Kogane
Summary: Gotham is alive, a cursed city of death and fear. It swarms with monsters that thrive in its ever-growing darkness. There is no one left to fight them as Gotham spirals ever deeper into their manipulative control.Red Hood is alive, a haunted soul of poisonous green and shadowy black. He suffers in silence as his mind rips itself apart. There's no one left to fight with him as he falls further into the darkness.Jason Todd is alive, a lost boy of fierce protection and quiet kindness. He watches as the world rejects him in every way. There's not much time left before he will fade away into shadows.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Durca, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Shadowverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2181498
Comments: 24
Kudos: 28





	Where the Light Doesn't Reach

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go. I've been contemplating this universe for three years, and now I'm gonna finally do it. It's gonna be awesome and hopefully y'all will like reading it as much as I like writing it. 
> 
> I present to you, my beloved readers, the story that has captured my interest for so long; Where the Light Doesn't Reach

There was a silence to the city. Under all the chaotic clamor of cars racing recklessly down the rain slicked streets. Under the screaming sirens speeding to the scene of the next catastrophe. Under the endless echo of gunfire glancing off grimy alley walls. Crime Alley walls. Rippling through the twists and turns of the Narrows, where the gunshot carries further than the screams that follow. 

Under it all, there was a silence. A silence that reminded you that even though the city screamed and roared and deafened all that it contained - there was an underlying certainty. A beat around which everything else twisted and tangled. The certainty that nothing would ever change. 

'It had always been this way,' they would tell you. 'It's just how life is,' the lie slipped so easily from their lips. That lie trapped to their tongues as tightly as the breath in their lungs, only loosed when that final breath of polluted air sighed from them and the city claimed another casualty. 

The silence stayed to remind you that it was futile. To fight was merely an activity to pass the time as death waited to spring from the shadows. Hope was a pastime of an innocent child, and those had all died long ago. Joy was as plentiful as clean air - reserved only for upper-class elite. Lives were fragile and frail, passing away in waves. The city was immortal, stealing the lives of its citizens - a parasite that feeds off the life force of their prey.

If only they knew just how true that was.

From his place among the stone gargoyles, he could see the little lives below. Busy with their small worries and concerns, unaware of the battle that churned around them. Fighting against a foe they could never see - it was beautiful in a tragic way. Always so persistent, gritting their teeth and fighting with broken nails against the inevitable. 

They'd never win, not while trapped in their own little realities, blind to the forces manipulating them. They were oblivious - not suspecting a thing even as they were caught in the sticky cobwebs of darkness that now dangle off their bodies like twisted lace, tapering strands blowing gently in the phantom wind. They wandered about, tripping, tangling, tumbling further into the trap.

And then the spiders came. 

But if you told them, they'd look at you with that resigned eyes of one that lives in a land of lunatics. As if they didn't have poison in their bones, seeping into their soul through the cracks the city kindly cut into them. Despair rots at a person's heart, grief crushes a person's lungs, and fear eats away at their very soul till they're left a walking corpse. 

That's when They strike. Only once the victim is drained dry do They suck away the last dredges of life away in their muffled death cry.

You see, Gotham is a parasite. But even more than that. Gotham is a host of it's own. And They flock to it like moths to a flame, taking refuge in the ever darkening shadows Gotham harbors. 

The people of Gotham could rise from the rubble if Gotham was all they were fighting. But rising is not enough when you're trapped at the bottom of a roiling ocean. You'll drown before you ever reach the surface.

* * *

It began as a rumor. A whisper traded amongst shadows. A warning. A myth. A legend.

It was a ghost, a shadow, a demon. 

Warehouses emptied inexplicably. Gangs shifted territories. Drug runners changed routes. 

In a city like Gotham, it wasn't noticeable - just another flashing neon sign blending into the chaos. Something was happening, yes, but something was always happening. What difference was this?

A year brought the whispers to tales, the rumors to superstition. _A phantom,_ they said. _A monster. It has eyes of venom. You can feel it seeping into you when you meet them. It corrupts you from within, until you wake up dead._

_It knows your mind, your every thought. You can't escape, you can't run. It catches you with claws of silver darkness that plunge into your chest, ripping your heart out._

_Its teeth are always sharp, always glinting in the light. No, not a smile like Joker. A smile like a wolf, a baring of teeth ready to rip into_ _your throat._

 _It drinks blood,_ the urban tale told, _it sees your heart and judges you._

The stories circulate, shifting through the city in silence. They are repeated, exaggerated, mocked, whispered, scorned, _believed._

But there was nothing to be feared.

 _A man, one of Black Mask's enforces. A quiet back_ _alley. A shadowed trade of information. Two hours later, a body. A sudden panic attack forcing the heart into cardiac arrest._

Legends were for storybooks. 

_A trafficking ring. A stormy night. An empty street. Three hours later, a warehouse abandoned. Captives fled, traffickers corpses littering the scene. Not a wound on them, just identical expressions of terror._

Ghost stories were simply to scare the superstitious and cowardly lot. 

_A rapist smoking on a rooftop. A_ _falling scream. A boy on the street looking up from the corpse. A sighting, for just a moment, of a dark figure, eyes blazing verde._

These were the common claims. Simple explanations, just the delusion, the wish of the people for a Batman that would free them from their shackles - _the city screams, wishes caught in falling teardrops, mingling with dark oil -_ a dark hero, someone who cared - _begging for mercy, noose tightening around their lungs, gun to their forehead -_ a savior to end a reign of tyranny in blood and terror. 

_Their souls cry out into the darkness, the plea of ten thousand lives in endless torture._

A legend does not live. A myth is as powerful as a fable. A desperate mind fabricates hope from nothing. For there is nothing here. 

There's no reason to hope.

There is nothing here.

There's no reason to pray.

There is no one to save you. 

There's nothing left but to fear.

There is nothing left but darkness.

~~_and the darkness moves._ ~~

**Author's Note:**

> *cackles* Things have begun. This fic is looking to be quite large, so prepare yourselves. When I started thinking about a world with this concept several years ago, I didn't think of making this more than just a bonding fic or just having a regular reconciliation arc. Now it looks like at the very least I will be covering Lost Days and Under the Red Hood. Then an unspecified time afterwards, a modified version of events that happened with Battle for the Cowl, some version of Red Hood and the Outlaws as well as the Red Robin comic arc, and then possibly even more past that point, cause that's the point where I was originally gonna start this story. 
> 
> Yes, I am probably insane.
> 
> but that's besides the point.


End file.
